Aah yes, delayed post is delayed but I have too many things happening for me lately. Excuses aside, the readers voted results have been compiled! 2012, if not one of the most memorable years in anime still had a lot to offer; depends on your taste and favourite genre really. From our Readers’ Choice poll results, it seems only a few titles (Hyouka, Fate/Zero and Nisemonogatari) got noticed but take it from someone who watches 80% of whatever comes out; there are gems hidden in there so don’t only go for face value and check out the details! Some interesting stats on this year’s awards:

Around 21,000 total votes

More than 40,000 page views

Total comments: 450

Average time spent on page: 7 minutes

Highest poll votes received on Female Lead nomination, while lowest on the best Director

See you again, next year!

The Boss lady of Metanorn, who makes it all happen. An animanga enthusiast, who watches/reads almost anything that strikes her fancy. Just beware of her Death Perception and always keep her happy. Regularly found at @KyokaiTM & [email protected].

Having heard the songs from Guilty Crown, I honestly think everyone has Stockholm Syndrome from watching that crappy series (and latched onto the least horrible thing about it), although I do have to admit that the OP cut of My Dearest is much better than the Single version (which is boring). That’s an even better editing job than they did on Burst the Gravity for Accel World, which becomes about the cheesiest song ever in the single version.

Just based on my feels for it, the 2nd is on mildly higher ground. More vocal range from a singer that threatens to sound like a warmed over Adelle; who does a great job of warming over her own performances IMO.

I honestly haven’t been attracted much by the music for Psycho Pass. The first OP wasn’t too bad, but got old quickly. The current ED is probably the one I listen to the most, mostly because they keep extending the show into it, not because I think it’s that good. And Nothing’s Carved in Stone makes a good song, but Out of Control is way below Spirit Inspiration (or Lighthouse, the second song on Spirit Inspiration. skylion, if you like prog at all, take a listen to that: 7/4 time).

I think the conductor of that train; the same series composition writer that marveled us (well maybe only me, and certainly not marveled, the opposite of marveled) with Seikon no Qwasar II might be the best to blame.

Epic train wreck of Fall 2011/Winter 2012. The entertainment was mostly from the animation, character designs and music. Redjuice and Supercell make a very good reason to watch it. The idea of pulling weapons from people’s bodies was interesting.

Have you forgotten Hare’s tragic death? She died in Shu’s arms and she was the sweetest character there. Her death had so much impact that it made Shu insane. Hare is a girl that would definitely be missed.

Red Data Girl just aired! New season slips in like a ninja.. Cyclops Shoujo [mini-series] already aired too. But it’s just those two. Next latest release will be Date A Live~ (super lovely~) on the 13th, and the real season shift begins 16th-27th (time for carnage again) I’m catching up to new recent releases right now, just finished Mondaiji.. ; – ; NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO IZAYOI + SHIROYASHAAAAA

Huge difference in appeal for me with different singers. Plus, with My Dearest in particular I find it overly bombastic and reaching too hard to be epic, instead of just BEING epic like Kimi no shiranai monogatari or Sayonara Memories.

Well, it’s also the music. Like I said, My Dearest feels like it’s *trying* to be epic, instead of just ending up being epic because it is. That’s the same thing that bugs me about Muse (the English band) in later works. Exogenesis was trying to be epic, Knights of Cydonia just ended up epic.

Around 21,000 total votes? Wow. More than 40,000 page views? Amazing. Total comments: 450? We can do better than that if given the chance.

To be honest, where the Best Female Seiyuu and Loli Princess categories are concerned, I knew Kana Hanazawa and Shinobu were going to gain the most votes. With a massive fanbase the two have, it’s near unthinkable that they wouldn’t win. For Hanazawa’s best role, it was surprising that Sengoku won since she only appeared in one episode of Nisemonogatari.

Guilty Crown is reeling in a lot of awards. For a train wreck of an anime, it was entertaining and had eye candy animation and music on its side. It’s looking so biased here that it’s almost like the Twilight MTV movie awards with the categories being dominated by one show.

I’m surprised with the Sengoku votes as well; seeing as how most of the rest of the category was very small roles, her turn as Ichiko had much more solid to it, in a show that had instant appeal. I put Karuta out there because I felt her understated performance perfectly matched the character; making moments like “Peking Duck!” that much more enthusiastic.

And yes, Shinobu is all the win. I take all the credit for this, of course.

It’s a sad fact that people just vote blindly on the basis of their own popularity chart. The reason you see Hyouka OVA winning or it even bagging the surprise series polls, when clearly there were many contenders better off than this. Half of the people who voted on HanaKana poll didn’t watch InuxBoku SS or let’s say Binbougami ga! at all. They just clicked on Sengoku because of Nisemonogatari’s popularity and overall likability.

Seeing Guilty Crown sweeping the music category is a bit overwhelming but the OST is still very commendable so I’ll back off. The only thing that surprised me though, is the badass weapons category, why wasn’t Gate of Babylon in there? I’m disappointed but I guess that’s the hive mind consensus. XD

Do agree that Guilty Crown has the best OP and ED. Never mind it was written by Supercell – My Dearest was one of those songs that literally got some physiologic response from me (read: an adrenaline rush and a strong urge to cry). I’m a little sad that the K OST didn’t even make top 3 though, it was one of those OSTs that had the most personality to me.

Despite knowing how much merit Hyouka has in terms of plot, animation, and characters, I’m surprised it won over other series with more, well, epic settings. I guess this is where I learn that “epic setting” does not really translate to epic series. I mean, look at Guilty Crown – it had so much promise that fell short, while Hyouka just took “high school slice-of-life” and wrung it out of whatever epicness that genre could ever provide. What a contradiction.

Also, I must be the only one who hasn’t watched Fate/Zero yet. Seeing the results now… well, I know what I’m marathoning first thing when my vacation rolls around.

K was in top three for best BGM so at least it did prove that the OST had merit. About Hyouka, I did like it but in terms of poll voting I was pretty astounded at it sweeping most of the major categories when a lot of other better series were out there.

PS: I should just troll you guys and ban you from Metanorn until you finish watching Fate/Zero!

But yeah I should really get around to watching Fate/Zero, and Steins;Gate too. Damn anime n00b is right. >_< To think I'm only persuaded to watch S;G because of how much I love Robotics;Notes. :))

…so you really wouldn't recommend Fate/Stay Night, not even to get a feel for Fate/Zero? I have it sitting around in my collection for years but I never got interested enough to break it out of packaging so to speak

Let me tell you one thing, fate/stay anime doesn’t even touch the glorious qualit of original VN. This is the reason you see TM-tards scoffing at others for liking it. Though, as an anime it was okay for its time but as you won’t miss any plot pointers or even world view because everything is described in detail in Fate/Zero, you are really not missing out in anything.

As Fate/Zero is the prequel, so fate/stay night doesn’t give much except for some character introduction. Also, anime is shit and if you really do want to check out something; VN is the best choice for fate/ anything.

I’ve never gotten around to VN’s for popular series like Umineko, Fate/Zero… I probably should. but I’m too caught up in TSURIOTSUUUUUUUUUUU!!! THE SEQUEL IS ANNOUNCED OMFG YESSSS. I also lovelove Yuzu-Soft, can’t wait for their next release Amairo Islenauts in May~

wat. I’m confused now. lol. But I like light novels too~ I’m on Volume 4 for Date A Live, and Volume 6 for SEIREI TSUKAI NO BLADE DANCEEEEEE, and I’ve read a bunch others. I tried helping out as an editor once in Baka Tsuki. For one day. lol. It turned out pretty much exactly like what happened when I tried to translate (not Japanese, Korean) I GOT BORREEDDD ;A; I’m such an unproductive person in any community

I’m a bit soft on the FSN anime simply because that was the one that got me in the Nasuverse(or at least, made me read the VN). I don’t join in the bashing of the show but I can understand all the hate for it.

I say let them watch the anime so that they can join in with bashing the show :))

I’m happy to see the warm response to Hyou-ka. As said, it didn’t have the epic setting of a Fate/Zero, yet it managed to soar high just on the strength of character development.

BTW. I hacked everyones computer and all your votes for Shinobu were actually my votes. And BB’s don’t count at all. I would have gotten her into other categories, but I wanted to reign in any suspicion.

Good to see that Chu2Koi, my personal fav in many areas got such a warm turn out. Could have been higher for Rikka-chan, could have been higher for Nibutani/Dekomori but thems the breaks.

Also very happy to see the turn out for Chihayfuru, a favorite that I thought would have had been stuck in niche appeal. Good show, folks.

Ask and ye shall receive, Kyokai. Both of us supported Shinobu’s win. I, with the vampire part and Skylion with the loli part. It was a 50/50 agreement and now he’s hogging all the glory. I’ve got a good mind to pursue him with legal action. However, I don’t know anything about hacking any computers. I’ve got an alibi. Um, I was catching up on some vampire mangas. Yep, that’s what I was doing.

I predict it will be a tough tournament for the loli themed characters of 2013 awards! I can almost bet money that Mondaiji will have the most loli characters nominations next time! That series has the likes of Shiroyasha, Sandra, plague loli, Maid/vampire loli and so many others.

And Izayoi is a bro. Just saying that Mondaiji almost has Oda Nobuna no Yabou beaten in the Loli department for characters. If Iza was more lika Saru then it would be competing in nearly the same turf.

Well, without Jin, all I’m seeing for lolis is Shiroyasha and Leticia half the time. I wouldn’t even put Lili in that category. So Izayoi’s count is 2, while Saru had what, 5? Hell, he had 3 in his normal Loli Force (Goemon, Inuchiyo, and Hanbei), and then a couple more hanging around back at the base.

Personally I didn’t LIKE Hyouka all that much, but I was really happy that it was not another cute girls doing cute things like K-ON and it was refreshing to have a non loli character turned super detective saving the day EVERY TIME and thankfully there were no life threatening cases! Besides that time when our main duo got locked in that storage shed >.>

Fate/Zero is better in marathon mode and I am sure Kyokai would agree! For me I have to say that the first half felt really really slow, but I KNOW why they had to take it easy xD

GC is well a odd ball series I would suggest turning off your mind in terms of worrying about the story? While it looks fantastic and the OST gets you into things if you pay attention to the real story you will be very angry afterwards! GC is another series that is better in marathon mode.

I recommend you see Fate/Zero sooner than later. The story is well thought out with tragedy and vile, villainous characters as well as noble and sometimes idealistically naïve heroes. Not to mention that the one heading the scipt is Gen Urobuchi. The very author behind Psycho-Pass.

I understand your situation perfectly because it happens to me also at times. I wouldn’t think of commenting on a show unless I’ve seen the episode beforehand. And I see you’re making up for absences by your recent comments. You’re almost to your 200 comment mark. Keep going!!!

Am I that intimidating? I don’t see anything special about it. I just enjoy these conversations. You guys come up with the craziest stuff and I noticed my commenting rate increased dramatically since you first started commenting here.

It’s not intimidating, just interesting to observe. And a lot of the commenting depends on the shows being blogged. Unfortunately a lot of the shows being blogged this season are ones that I’m not watching (Amnesia, Hakkenden, Unlimited, Chihayafuru), while the 23 I’m watching are kind of underrepresented (Too bad the writers got so busy, I totally adore Love Live!). But other shows have gotten more comments from me than BB (Did you even watch Girls und Panzer? And if not, why not, go watch it now!).

Pffft, nice. You’re making this sound as if we’re in DBZ announcing these huge comment numbers like they’re power levels. Overcooled is close to 3800 and Fosh is in a league of his own. I’m just waiting for him to reach 9000 so I can shout the iconic anime sentence “It’s over 9000!!!”.

2012 was difficult with the choices in categories but it looks like 2013 is going to be murder, especially in the loli category with Mondaiji hoarding a devastating bunch of candidates.

Also, I’m curious as to who the contenders in the villain section will be. I might be biased right now but my money for best villain is on Psycho-Pass’s Shougo Makishima. He does everything to make you want to hate him but you end up admiring him for being a sadistic, psychotic and charismatic badass.

Lastly, did anyone notice that no one mentioned Kore wa Zombie’s Kyouko in any of the categories? That feels terribly wrong.

Makishima really has it down for best villain next time around. I really can’t think of anyone else taking it over him unless there’s something random comes up and devastates him, but that would be really hard.